INSIGHTS FROM A 'MONKEY DOCTOR'

Copyright 1996 Chicago Tribune Company
Chicago Tribune
February 11, 1996 Sunday, CHICAGOLAND FINAL EDITION
SECTION: TRIBUNE BOOKS; Pg. 6; ZONE: C; Nonfiction.
LENGTH: 1263 words
HEADLINE: INSIGHTS FROM A 'MONKEY DOCTOR';
WHAT HANS KUMMER LEARNED FROM OBSERVING THE BEHAVIOR OF THE HAMADRYAS BABOON
BYLINE: Reviewed by Julia Glass, author of an award-winning entry in the 1993
Nelson Algren Short Story Competition.
BODY:
In Quest of the Sacred Baboon: A Scientist's Journey
By Hans Kummer
Translated by M. Ann Biederman-Thorson
Princeton University Press, 376 pages, $29.95
A melange of textbook, travelogue and philosophical memoir, "In Quest of the
Sacred Baboon" is an ethologist's everything-but-the-kitchen-sink account of two
decades' research on the hamadryas baboon, both in captivity and in the wild.
What it lacks in economy and organization it makes up for in charm, intelligence
and self-effacing wit (conveyed through M. Ann Biederman-Thorson's gracious
translation). With neither the dark fanaticism of a Dian Fossey nor the
pragmatic crusading of a Jane Goodall, Hans Kummer renders in exhaustive,
affectionate detail the social customs of his chosen species and how those
customs reflect on the evolution of primates in general (ourselves among them),
on genetic versus cultural evolution and on the overarching nature of evolution
as we perceive it.
His journey began in the Zurich Zoo in 1955, when, as a zoology student,
Kummer chose to write his thesis on a colony of baboons. He might as easily have
chosen geckos or pythons, he admits, but what attracted him to the monkeys was
his enthusiasm for studying a society. In the book's first chapter, we are drawn
into the daily life of a captive "family" of 15 hamadryas baboons--from Pasha,
"the sole adult male, object of fascination and fear for all the others," leader
of the typical baboon harem, to Vecchia, a submissive, even persecuted female
who nevertheless rises to become "executive officer" of the family when
Pasha's virility and power wane. In this setting, Kummer serves an
apprenticeship of observation, cataloging and translating every gesture from
brow-raising to lip-smacking; scrutinizing the curious ritual of grooming
(focused on the dominant male's shaggy mantle), which is so essential to group
cohesion; and making sense of behaviors such as "protected threatening" (in
which a female averts conflict between two males by expressing submission in
back and aggression in front).
Kummer had yet to see the hamadryas in its native savanna/desert habitat of
the Red Sea region, so many of the generalizations he made in Zurich would later
be revised. But he raises fascinating questions on what scientists may discover
about evolutionary possibilities when studying their subjects behind bars, thus
challenging the ethologist's bias that zoo behavior is irrelevant to nature.
Describing what he calls the "blossoming of natural dispositions in unnatural
surroundings," he writes that zoo animals "can develop the potential of their
species to a degree unknown in the wild for certain areas of behavior, though
other abilities may atrophy. For primates, the zoo can easily serve as a
hothouse for social behavior, but it also creates animals that know as little
about foraging and predators in their native habitat as a human city dweller
knows about deer hunting or raising sheep. So if a critical reader is still
convinced that Pasha's group was behaving abnormally, I would ask: How normal
is it for us to play and explore beyond our basic needs?" And in analyzing his
surprise that an underdog like Vecchia could rise to the top of her family's
pecking order, he exposes our human assumptions about the influence of ego and
identity on social destiny.
In 1960, Kummer found the opportunity--albeit with scant funds, only one
assistant and a quirky "gray toad" of a Jeep named Emma--to travel to Ethiopia,
where the hamadryas baboons lived along the rocky cliffs in an arid region near
Dire Dawa, in troops of about 200 and in such proximity to human settlements
that they would allow people to venture within 30 yards of them--an ethologist's
dream come true. (Ethology, Kummer explains, is a science that concentrates on
species-specific instincts, not learned behavior; until that time, it had been
applied mainly to insects, fishes and birds, not to mammals and least of all to
primates.)
Once in the homeland of his beloved quarry, "the monkey doctor" (as he is
locally christened) revels not only in bringing science to the bush but also in
wrestling with the culture: struggling to speak the native Amharic, to make
peace with the hovering (and armed) Issa-Somali nomads, to fend off a
chronically meddlesome hippo--all such attempts yielding one cheerfully
sustained misadventure after the next. Still, the baboons hold center
stage--though earning the privilege to watch them up close takes diligence and
patience.
"The zoologist's dream of being accepted by wild animals, nourished by
Kipling's Mowgli and Lofting's Dr. Dolittle, is actually a prerequisite for a
primate ethologist in the field," writes Kummer. "An entomologist, by contrast,
can crouch at the nest of a mason bee or by the transport route of an ant colony
without disturbing the objects of his attention; if he just holds still he soon
becomes part of the landscape. This makes his work easier, but he will never
have the pleasure of being regarded as a (member of the same species) by his
animals."
With the aid of intricate diagrams and diverse illustrations, Kummer portrays
the very particular social infrastructure that hamadryas baboons--as opposed to
gelada, anubis, savanna and other baboon species--have developed to suit their
environment. From a human point of view (a bias of which Kummer is constantly
aware), the life of the male hamadryas baboon is oddly poignant. Though one
would assume the closed harem system puts him in tyrannical control of his
females, in fact he is highly vulnerable to losing his partners, and his
precarious prime of life lasts only half a dozen years, after which he falls
dramatically in stature. While dominant, he exerts a great deal of effort to
"herd" his mates (Kummer quaintly calls them "wives") and maintains absolute
sexual fidelity to them once he becomes a "husband"; by contrast, the females
often lead sexually promiscuous lives and may even acquiesce to being
"kidnapped" by a male from another band. The respectful confraternity that
Kummer observes among the males of a close-knit group is something akin only to
human behavior at its best, and his analysis of the evolutionary logic behind
such apparent altruism yields some provocative surprises.
What this book might have included are points of general ethological theory:
for instance, how the strategies of any animal may be evaluated by two criteria,
survival value for the genes and gratification value for the individual; or how
the so-called higher animals have been forced to form groups with their
competitors, creating societies full of conflict (lacking the "often-admired
social perfection" of, say, termite society).
Unfortunately, conflict invaded Kummer's scientific paradise when, in 1977,
war broke out in the wake of Haile Selassie's assassination; the baboon field
projects came to an end and were never to resume in that region. Kummer returned
to Switzerland to reflect, write and mourn the abrupt loss of contact with an
entire society in which he had invested an alter ego of sorts. Consciously or
not, I suspect, his title reference to the hamadryas baboons as "sacred" refers
not so much to their hallowed status in ancient Egyptian lore (mentioned only in
the book's introduction) as to the place they hold in the author's own
intellect, imagination and affections. For though this book may be read as a
scientist's account of his life work, it also reads as the anthem to a long and
happy love affair.

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